Continuous Localization
In the 20+ years that software that aids the translation process has been available, a lot has changed. A lot of the initial work was focused on helping translators with Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. Later, Translation Management Systems (TMS) came to help large companies manage the complexities of the translation process. As many companies needed to manage translations and reviews in-house, TMS systems often included also CAT solutions. With time, as even smaller companies without a localization team needed translations, TMS were also adopted by Language Service Providers (LSP) to improve efficiency and pass the benefits back to the customer. This improved the translation itself but put the burden of content integration and project management to the customer as content was often exchanged in a manual fashion like by email. This may be acceptable for companies with infrequent releases, but in a world turning to continuous integration, testing, and delivery, automating the translation process becomes imperative.
TMS vendors have added capabilities to their tools, but Continuous Localization (CL) still remains more difficult than it needs to be. Integration with translation vendors is still rare. Realistically, only companies with a volume and frequency of translations that justifies a localization team will invest in the customization and maintenance of a vendor-agnostic CL solution.
For smaller companies, the best bet may be finding a CL-friendly TMS hosted (and maintained) by an LSP.
Following, we present a compendium of products that may help implementing a CL workflow.